Chapter 30 #5
“It helps people find their heart’s desire, for one. It can also be an anchor for a god, so that a part of them would be attached to the place The God Stone is kept.”
For the last ten years, Nymiria felt as if she were being punished for all that she failed to do.
She felt that Greia abandoned her, allowed all of those horrible things to happen to her.
She felt worthless. Alone. But there was always something rooted deep inside of her that dragged her back to the altar.
There was always something that spoke to her and told her to look deeper.
In her own turmoil, she neglected to listen and she spent years of her life searching for answers in all of the wrong places.
Nymiria’s heart’s desire was to find her way. Her purpose. The truth. “Why did you have me believe that the Anam wasn’t me?” She questioned. “Why not just tell me?”
“When I first met you, I had no clue what you were.
It wasn't until you said that you could smell me in the market that I came to the conclusion that you were who the gods had been looking for. You wouldn't have been able to sense me outright if you weren't. Nonetheless, I was told that I shouldn’t interfere with your journey. An individual, god or not, can plant whatever seed they wish, but you cannot force a flower to bloom. It’s the same reason I debated telling you about who your father was. I hoped that you would start to realize things on your own—the more I took you away from this place, the more I had you in Eadyn—I hoped that it would help and you would be more receptive when I was finally able to tell you.” He smirked.
"But as always, you are nosy and impulsive, and went snooping through my things. "
Nymiria pushed herself up onto one elbow, her hair falling around her shoulders at the movement.
She didn’t fail to notice Aziel’s eyes tracking the path, nor the way his fingers twitched as if he wished to run his fingers through it again.
“Thorn is a good man. He always cared for me—always made sure that I felt loved. It was confusing, as a child, being told that the Unseelie were people of darkness and corruption by my mother, only for her to keep him as close as possible. True, their methods are… wild when it came to business and protecting the things they loved.”
“Thorn’s parents and Inasha’s parents believed that their union would bring peace amongst the warring courts.
The Yaarboroughs were plotting destruction throughout The Beyond and they believed that having both courts together would be the key to protecting the Mystics from the greater forces across The Divide.
” Aziel explained. “It worked, for the most part. Until…”
“Until my mother went missing?”
Aziel paused, surveying her for a moment. “Until she ran away, Nymiria. She was not taken. She left willingly.”
“How do you know?”
“Thorn was the closest person to your mother, Nymiria. When Dorid breached The Divide and started heading straight into the heart of Nym, it was an outright slaughter. The Nymirian Militia was underprepared and outmanned, leaving hundreds dead between The Divide and The Beyond. Not just the militia, but civilians, too. Majority of them being the witches that lived in the forest.” Aziel explained.
He looked over Nymiria’s face, assessing her emotions before he continued.
“When Thorn told your mother of this, she left. Not a note to be found, nor a single explanation as to why—nothing.”
Thorn had been the one to tell her that her mother had been taken. Perhaps he had tried to make her mother seem like less of a coward by doing that, but the lie had left a gaping and nagging hole in her chest for the last ten years.
It all made sense—the anger she received from her mother's people. Their anger and their frustration, their desire to harm her instead of protect her. They felt like they’d been abandoned.
And Nymiria was the closest thing to Inasha; perhaps they believed that her mother would come running back the moment she heard of her daughter’s torture.
Maybe they believed that Nymiria was teaming with her mother to plot the kingdom’s destruction by having run to Yaar in search of her. Perhaps—
“You didn’t deserve what they did to you, Nymiria.
None of it was your fault.” Aziel leaned closer to her, his fingers finally relaxing when he took her hair and brushed it over her shoulder.
“You were a child. A scared, lost child whose world had been turned upside down in a matter of days. They should have never blamed you.”
It was never her fault. And while the fear of facing them again still lingered, she had faith that their hearts had changed.
And that, just like her, perhaps they had their own regrets they needed to atone for.
“I don’t want the fae to know what I am just yet.
” She confessed, her voice so soft that he had to strain to hear.
“You might see it as manipulative, but I would like for them to know me as Nymiria first. Not a princess. Not a goddess. Just me.”
Aziel nodded. It was in his nature, in his heart, and his feelings for her that would give her anything she wished.
But he understood this. He knew that feeling of wanting to make sure that people loved you for who you were and not what you could offer them.
For so long, he felt the need to prove himself and to slice away at his being in order to gain the love of a father that refused to see him as anything other than baggage or a machined killer.
It took him years of being away from Dorid Yaarborough to discover that while love required some giving, it also required the other person to give just as passionately—without complaint or consequence.
Real love was not conditional.
True, he’d hated Nymiria for who he believed she became. But the world had done a phenomenal job at making him believe that very few people had good intentions.
Not her.
She believed that there was good in everyone—something worth saving.
"When we are free of this hell, Nymiria, I would like to help you with your powers." He said softly.
Nymiria nodded slowly, her smile growing tired. "I would love that." She replied.
They both fell silent in their exhaustion, still filled with thousands of questions that could not be answered in one night.
Nymiria fell back into a deep sleep, her breathing shallow and her fingers now gripping at the fabric of his trousers.
Aziel watched her, eyes trailing over every vine and flower that glowed upon her skin with sheer wonder.
He looked at her with the love he was terrified to give, and held her close to a body that was sick with his shame.
Camalia ruined him. And she did so with a smile—watching him, laughing at him as if it had been her plan all along.